If you’re a parent of a child with gluten sensitivity or celiac disease, you know how much of a struggle it can be to keep your child compliant with a dietary restriction, especially when you have some doubt as to whether that diet is necessary.
Luckily, the Vibrant Wheat Zoomer is the most sensitive and specific test on the market for detecting sensitivity to thousands of peptides found in wheat and gluten. No other test can boast the ability to measure reactivity with that level of accuracy. A positive result on the Wheat Zoomer leaves no doubt as to whether you need to eliminate gluten from your diet.
Up until recently, the Wheat Zoomer had only been established for adult populations, and some pediatric reports were borderline or inconclusive, due to the way children’s immune systems develop over time.
Vibrant is excited to announce that the Wheat Zoomer is now available with pediatric reference ranges, and all samples received after June 25, 2018, for patients under the age of 18 will automatically be measured against those newly established references.
Because celiac disease and gluten sensitivity can often be tied to genetics, parents with those conditions should consider getting their children tested in order to intervene early with a gluten-free diet and avoid potentially years of inflammatory symptoms that can lead to more serious health problems as the child ages.
If you have previously had a child with a Wheat Zoomer that was inconclusive or have delayed having your child tested out of concern that the test may not be able to pick up his/her reactivity as well, now is the perfect time to contact your healthcare provider and discuss a Wheat Zoomer pediatric test.
The same considerations still apply prior to taking the Wheat Zoomer test:
- Consumption of wheat/gluten prior to the blood draw is necessary in order to accurately measure one’s reactivity to those proteins
- If your child has been gluten-free for some time, you may choose to have them take the test anyway, or you may add a small serving of gluten/wheat into their diet daily for 2-3 weeks before their blood draw
- Children on immunosuppressant drugs may not be good candidates for this test because endogenous antibody production is suppressed and will often come back inconclusive or ‘negative’ on an antibody test such as the Wheat Zoomer
